The present invention relates generally to a network-based management tool and, more particularly, to a system and method for managing event scheduling and coordination.
Planning, scheduling, and coordinating meetings for even a small group of people can often be laborious. The difficulty in coordinating meetings seems to increase exponentially as the number of desired participants increases. Contacting the desired participants is only the first hurdle in the process. Gathering responses from all of the individual invitees often becomes almost unmanageable as the workforce becomes more and more mobile. Even after a person has committed to attending an important meeting, the fast pace of business today may often result in a busy individual forgetting to attend a meeting that he or she had previously agreed to attend.
For example, suppose that a person needs to schedule a meeting for twenty company employees. It may take several days to initially contact all twenty parties by phone. An easier approach could be to send out an e-mail message to all twenty parties. The meeting planner, however, must gather, read, and record the incoming responses. At some point, a decision must be made to contact the non-respondents to re-invite them to the meeting.
As another example, suppose that a meeting planner has managed to contact and manually record the responses of thirty busy members of the engineering department for attendance at a meeting to be held in two weeks. Even if all thirty agreed to attend the subject meeting weeks before it is scheduled, the chances are high that at least some, and probably a significant number, of the invitees will forget about the meeting when the appropriate time comes. After having no contact with the invitees since the original response, the meeting planner may be surprised when several invitees fail to show up at the meeting.
Suppose, as a final example, that attendance at a meeting by a large number of company employees is desired. Further suppose that a large percentage of the desired invitees must attend the meeting, or else the meeting has to be cancelled and rescheduled at a more appropriate time. Receiving, categorizing, and managing the replies of all the invitees would require a full-time effort by at least one individual who would have to maintain and manually update a chart as the responses are received. An up-to-date report on the status of the invitations and responses would be difficult to maintain.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that manages an invitation process, re-invites those invitees who fail to respond, reminds invitees about the upcoming meeting, and combines the replies from all invitees into a consolidated report that is available on request.
Systems and methods consistent with the present invention address these and other needs by providing a mechanism through which an event scheduling tool can automatically manage the coordination of a meeting or other event for a user.
In accordance with the purpose of this invention as embodied and broadly described herein, a computer-implemented method for managing an event is provided. The computer-implemented method includes receiving event information, generating at least one message relating to the event and transmitting the at least one message to a plurality of event invitees. The computer-implemented method also includes receiving at least one response from at least one of the invitees and generating a status report based on the responses.
In another implementation consistent with the present invention, a computer-readable medium having stored sequences of instructions is provided. The sequences of instructions when executed by at least one processor, cause the processor to provide a user interface for entering event information, receive event information via the user interface and generate at least one message relating to the event. The instructions also cause the processor to transmit the at least one message to a plurality of event invitees, receive at least one response from at least one of the invitees and generate a status report based on the responses.
In yet another implementation consistent with the present invention, a method for tracking responses to a questionnaire is provided. The method includes transmitting the questionnaire to a plurality of recipients and receiving responses to the questionnaire from at least one of the recipients. The method further includes transmitting reminder notices to non-responding recipients and generating a status report based on the responses.
In a further implementation consistent with the present invention, a system for providing event planning management in a network having a plurality of user devices is provided. The system includes a memory that stores data relating to an event and a processor coupled to the memory. The processor is configured to receive event scheduling information and generate messages relating to the event based on input from one of the user devices. The processor is also configured to transmit the messages to invitees via the network, receive responses from the invitees and generate a report based on the received responses.